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Wainstein updates UNC on probe

By Dan KaneNews & Observer

The former U.S. Justice Department official hired to get to the bottom of the long-running academic fraud scandal at UNC-Chapel Hill said Friday his team is making substantial progress, having interviewed more than 80 people and reviewed thousands of student records, including transcripts.

“I have to say we have made a lot of progress over the past four months,” Kenneth Wainstein told the UNC Board of Governors.

Wainstein said the university is cooperating fully, and that previous probes have produced “results that have informed our investigation.”

His 10-minute status report did not reveal any findings, which he said would not be made available until his report is done. He said he hopes to be done “sometime by the fall.”

“At this point, we’re in the thick of it,” he said.“It’s impossible to give an exact time frame as to when this might be done.”

Wainstein described a broad investigation that is looking at academic records that stretch back to the 1980s. He said his team has collected more than 1.5 million emails and other documents for review.

Wainstein said he is trying to determine how the no-show classes happened, who was involved and who knew about them. He is seeking to know whether students did legitimate work and had any involvement with faculty.

He also spoke to the scandal’s connections to the athletic department. He said his investigation is trying to determine if anyone there encouraged athletes to take the classes and whether that was done to help keep them eligible to play sports.

No findings about the investigation are yet being shared with UNC-Chapel Hill or UNC system officials, Wainstein said.

Board members asked no questions after his presentation.

Wainstein, 52, is now a private attorney in Washington, D.C., after serving much of his career as a federal prosecutor and U.S. Justice Department administrator. He capped his federal career as Homeland Security adviser in the final year of George W. Bush’s presidency.

He was hired after a search that began in January, just as the national media ramped up its coverage of the academic scandal. UNC system and university officials said they hired Wainstein to pick up where a state criminal investigation had left off. In December, that investigation led to a criminal fraud charge against former African studies department chairman Julius Nyang’oro.

Nyang’oro’s attorney, Bill Thomas of Durham, said earlier this month that his client is now cooperating with Wainstein’s investigation. Thomas said Nyang’oro is innocent of the charge. The case has yet to be tried in court.

The scandal involves more than 200 confirmed or suspected lecture-style classes within the African studies department that never met. A previous UNC-backed investigation found the classes go as far back as 1994. Athletes made up 45 percent of the enrollments, including some entire classes. They account for 5 percent of the student population.

There were also more than 500 suspected or confirmed unauthorized grade changes, and hundreds of accurately named independent studies that lacked adequate supervision.

Earlier this month, Rashad McCants, a star on the 2005 men’s basketball team that won the NCAA championship, told ESPN that his three years at UNC were filled with no-show classes and independent studies from the department. It was a “paper class system” that he said everyone in the athletic department knew about, including Coach Roy Williams.

The News &Observer also reported that at least five players on that team were heavily enrolled in the classes, according to data provided by whistleblower Mary Willingham, a former learning specialist for the athletes’ tutoring program.

Williams has denied any knowledge of impropriety, and several basketball players have since said their educations were legitimate.

Wainstein is being paid $990 an hour for his work. Three attorneys in his firm are being paid between $775 and $440 an hour. UNC officials say the money is not coming from taxpayer funds.